Bücher der Reihe Organization, Management and Crime - Organisation, Management und Kriminalität

This work is dedicated to map the modes of thinking and acting of legal professionals who work in white-collar crime. Lawyers, whose decisions generate economic and political consequences, stand at a strategic location between the state and key segments of society. This monograph¿s approach is linked to the foundations of the sociology of knowledge, that culture antecedes and anchors social action. It starts by reconstructing the worldviews that legal professionals hold about corruption and its main participants, and then advances to examine decision-making. The author is introducing an innovative dataset comprised of interviews, court records and biographical data to investigate Brazilian lawyers (1985-2021). The study¿s qualitative findings show a professional cognitive pattern that is apolitical and technical, and criticizes unskilled people working in the state administration more than businesspeople. The dominant mindset understands corporate-state relations as a self-feeding system that requires qualification and awareness of international trends to counter crime. The decision-making patterns confirm: (i) that prosecutors and judges prioritize the ends, fighting corruption, and use existing legislation and organizational resources to secure verdicts; (ii) the asymmetries between how bribe-payers and bribe-payees are treated.

This book presents the results of an international comparative study on the causes of rule deviation in business and medical organizations. Based on document and interview analyses as well as experiments, the discrepancy between (state) regulations and organizational practice is elaborated and discussed in an interdisciplinary perspective. On the basis of the distinction between organizational and individual deviance, it could be shown across national boundaries that the unwritten rules of the organization make a decisive contribution in explaining organizational wrongdoing, as well as their containment. Implications for effective prevention derived from this are also pointed out.